


Last Days on the Job

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Fiction, M/M, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-27
Updated: 2005-03-27
Packaged: 2018-11-20 20:32:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: My take on the last days of the Krycek being Mulder's partner and lover in the FBI.





	Last Days on the Job

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

Last Days on the Job

### Last Days on the Job

#### by Griva

  


Jobs 3 - Last Days on the Job 

Notes: takes place about 3 weeks after Jobs 2. The scene continues after D.Barry has been sniper-shot and assumes that Alex has been there through the whole op. The timeline (Duane Barry ep. is dated august 4th) is shifted to early July, supposing that Krycek's birthday is June 22nd. 

Historical note: The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a pivotal event in Czechoslovakia's political development. The intervention by forces from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Poland, Bulgaria, and Hungary marked the beginning of the end of the Prague Spring and the reformist policies introduced by the anti-Communist regime. During the night of August 20-21, the armies of five Warsaw Pact nations invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. The KSC Presidium issued a statement over Prague radio condemning the invasion and appealing to the people to remain calm and the army not to resist. No major armed resistance was forthcoming. 

Yet, for the dramatic sake of retelling Krycek's family background, I altered the history a bit. Humbled forgiveness for that. 

Beta'd by Jynn. This would have not been finished if not for her constant pokes and support. Also, the lievly discussions initiated by Jynn and Bardsmaid have influenced my character vision. 

* * *

Part 1. 

The long work day for _My-Middle-Name-is-Fetch-and-Carry-Boy_ was drawing to an end. Well, at least I wasn't meant to stay as the _Cappuccino Boy_ for everyone. I still sizzled at the memory of it. That bulging-eyed pompous bitch Kazdin. Another know-it-all in an expensive suit who was bearing herself around with the look as if her hearing was keener than the others', and as if she heard silences we were unaware of. Mulder had her, maybe not big time, but he had her when he maintained his blood-boiling mixture of righteousness and defiance. Served her right. 

I have since noticed that I have been dubbed the Junior who shot an insomniac GI. And that no one smirked any more behind my back or in my face when I mention that I was that renown shunned fibbie's partner who had put his life on stake at the first call of a gunweaving delusional psycho. Yeah right, tainted by Spooky's fame and loving it. 

Speaking of whom... 

Mulder wasn't among the Swat boys nor Scully since they had packed an unconscious Barry into the ambulance van. Mulder had more gumption than a horse, apparently. It bugged me that even after the experience that Mulder just had that he wouldn't just pick up his legs and go have his well-deserved shut-eye. 

I bet he didn't go claim his 3 minutes of glory on the evening news either. So the *usagainst -the-world* pair must be sneaking around in shadowed corners again, thrashing out another plot. 

I was walking slowly to the bureau car, trying to think ahead to cool water, ice-cold beer and seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. Tonight apparently, no one would be breathing hotly on my neck, enclosing with his hand my heat and hardness, urging *C'mon, we've still got ten minutes left to midnight*. I've made it into another rule with Mulder. I am not a night owl, and while the occasional night-long stakeout or a lively bed-sport session could be a refreshing change of pace, I require at least six hours of unbroken sleep. 

I fancy far from it... 

I had spotted Mulder's blue paramedic's shirt with a keen shooter's eye before I understood it was my partner. In the parking lot, apart from the crowd bustling with journalists and onlookers and annoying officials with impenetrable faces, Mulder stood propping himself on the roof of the black car, hands supporting his head, locked on his neck. Mulder's stooped shoulders looked sore to my eyes. What was he so crushed about to stand there like he was the hero of some ancient Greek tragedy? What did he have to be defeated about? I doubted this experience could have been such a great shock for him, after the Rocky Horror Picture Show he must have head up, travelling around the country with behaviorist trail-blazer Patterson. 

And Scully was there, too. I hadn't noticed her short figure immediately. By the way her head and shoulders were moving, it was apparent she was actively talking. And her palm was above the small of Mulder's back, in a gesture of perfect congenial concern. 

It was stuffy and hot, yet another mid-July evening when a storm was anticipated and was the prevailing topic in the weather news, though the rain must have been by-passing DC again. For unimaginable reasons Scully wore a brown nondescript trench-coat and I couldn't look at her without sweating out another cupful. Her big baby blues and flamboyant haircolor brought fragile canary eggs, shiny chestnuts and vulnerable spaniel puppies to my mind. If she grew her hair longer, painted her lips dark berry and let a little bit of cleavage show, she would have been popular in the market of the forensic lab-geeks, bracing Microsoft clerks and bear-guzzling middle class barflies. I wondered if being released from running Mulder's errands made Scully put on a bit of weight. She hasn't been to Gold's Gym for a while: she has grown... chubbier somehow. 

My thoughts jumped then. Dangerous, sharp and unfamiliar fingers of jealousy poked me between the ribs. Damn you Fox, if you knew how many calories I burned just from _keeping_ my eyes on you, not to mention the keeping of tabs that I do. The visuals of Mulder's work-outs with me over these past weeks interfered with my composure, made me feel awkward and lewd. I was disgusted that my own shirt was sticking to my back and my lips were salty with nervy sweat. 

Scully didn't hear me come within reach of hearing, and I caught her asking Mulder, "...so you find it suspicious that there were not a lot of people involved from Richmond's office?" Her voice radiated composed incomprehension. 

Mulder noticed me approaching first, straightened up and turned to stand with his back against the car. He looked like he was trying to concentrate. I noticed immediately by the wilted slant of his eyes that fatigue must be kicking in and by the pursed expression of his lips that he was applying effort to listen to what Scully was droning. 

Within a few seconds Scully perceived that something had caught Mulder's attention and turned her head in my direction. We traded nods, the typical downtown office we-don'treally -know-each-other-and-lets-keep-it-that-way sign of mutual recognition and disinterest. 

Mulder, however, included me into the conversation immediately. 

"I was telling Scully that I doubt the professional capabilities of all those guys who ruled the backstage. Kazdin is reliable, but who were the rest? I should have taken some names but events got ahead of me." 

"Well, I can try and nose around tomorrow," I offered dutifully. What I resentfully kept to myself was that by the looks and talk of the officers in the background, they were dressedup carpenters. While I was catching every word of Mulder baiting Barry, the three of them were babbling if Pension Fund would change its refund policy and if Michael' s wife would make a tuna casserole for a late supper. Perhaps the world's worst crime was boredom, while the first was being a bore. The true punishment of federal employment was the overweening banality that governed their every moment... 

Mulder made a slightly sour face as if he expected me to have tracked the officers already, but then I had already gotten used to his manner of expecting most people to exceed his expectations. 

"Well, at least by roping you in next to Barry they managed to save the front-stage, but I wonder why they chose you to begin with," Scully found it necessary to note, her voice frosty and sceptic. She still hadn't acknowledged my presence at that point with more than two looks over her shoulder, besides the hello nod. It inflamed me more that I couldn't find any believable reason besides a major personal one why she was alienating me. I bet she knew. The ink on the form had dried a few days ago - I was officially the Junior Partner, not an intern. Not a day-fly impostor. But she was acting deliberately territorial, stubbornly refusing to accept the status quo. 

I wanted to take her by the elbow and pull her aside, because it was _me_ who had gotten used to standing face to face with Mulder, and at a much closer distance than she'd ever be able to reach. I felt my blood begin to boil at her poise and I couldn't do a fucking thing to demonstrate who was who. 

/I'm his fucking boyfriend, you know./ 

Since when had labelling this become a matter of principle to me? I was priding myself for taking calculated risks, and that was quite different from being rash. But it was hard not to grin, imagining Scully's reaction if I had told her this now and out loud. 

Meanwhile Mulder had kept on talking to her rather lively, but his eyes were dark stones and his voice almost on auto-pilot, 

"See, you are getting the paranoia vibe. And be sure I will talk to Kazdin more tomorrow." 

"She's relocating to Marriott," I shared the bit of info I had managed to overhear. 

Mulder suddenly broke into a wide grin and surprised us both. I made a mental note to ask Mulder the next time he got loose in the tongue if perhaps there were some x-rated pleasant memories involved. At least I was delighted because Scully looked taken aback, like she thought he was a bit... disturbed, by the sudden change of his facial expression. 

"You okay, Mulder?" Mulder had moved so that we were standing to form a perfect triangle, but then Scully turned so that the two of them were almost excluding me from the conversation. This was starting to abrade me. I wasn't a ladys man, though I could have any of the many. There was no challenge in them. No sparring potential. Women were like elephants to me. I liked to look at them, but I wouldn't want to touch or own one. And they were so easily hurt, so non-influential in my previous life that I didn't bother to see them as a serious threat or significant competition. Up to now my height was a very good advantage talking to them. Not with her. Scully ... she had guts. And wits. She was making me feel...like I had to prove something to her. 

And contrary to what I felt toward Mulder, I had _no_ desire to prove any of my worth to that woman. She had yet to learn the hard way that her weakness was too much selfconfidence only aggravated by her unnecessary show of exclusivity. And if there was one thing that I truly could not stand, it was weakness. My own, someone else's. It all came down to vulnerability, the possibility of someone being able to place a foot on the back of your neck. I've been learning over the years to exploit it in others. I've even taken some pleasure in watching the face of a person who abruptly realizes that the carpet is suddenly beneath their knees instead of their feet. I had no illusion that I'm a pro. But I'd stopped being a gofer when I broke my first nose and traded cigarettes for extra hours of sleep... 

Scully had to repeat her question to break through Mulder's increased dissipation of his state of mind. 

"Yeah." Mulder's hand brushed aimlessly over his chest and then to the collar of his white tee underneath, then relocated it finally to the driver's door handle. 

"Whatever you're feeling... you did the right thing," Scully assured him. 

I was biased and heard a favor in every one of her phrases. Mulder nodded, his eyes rather vacant. I wanted to stomp my foot. Couldn't the woman see he was really not into discourses? He was barely standing tall, leaning a bit on the door now. Yet Mulder added to stand his ground, 

"It's just that, uh... I believed him." 

"Sometimes when you want to believe badly enough, you end up... looking too hard." Scully's voice was mollified as she watched Mulder undo one more button on his already sweat-stricken blue shirt. It's color hurt my eyes, made me feel more uncomfortable with the situation. It triggered a response in me not unlike that of a red flag being wavered in front of a bull, part fear, part anger. 

/Now that's the perfect morale for the day/, I burnt to put in, and at that moment it was a statement that worked towards both Scully and myself. The air around us was too humid, and my own moral dithering was grinding me down. I bit on the tip of my tongue and rolled on the balls of my feet. Cut Scully another tiny sharp glance, /Leave us alone, will you?/ "You can't drive after such a shake-up," Scully instructed. 

I let the air out of my lungs carefully, as if suffering from the heat. /Honey, if you only knew that he is not as breakable as you think. Though he is pretty bendable. Resilient to the influence of external irritants, to name you as one of them./ 

"Alex will give me a lift," Mulder commented offhandedly and Scully gave me an evaluating look that made my hackles go up - like if I could be trusted with such a mission. Another effort to control my mimics. My face was so flat it could reflect laser-beams. At least Mulder finally seemed ready to depart. And remembered that it was the car leased in my name that had driven us here. 

"G'bye," Mulder squeezed her shoulder, not with full force I noticed, but as if he wanted only to dig his fingers fabric deep. A Mulder farewell. Short and unsweetened. He went around the front of the car to open the passenger's door. I heard Scully jingling some keys in the pocket of her coat. 

"Drive safely," I wished in a low voice but I wasn't sure Mulder heard me. My voice wasn't exactly dripping concern. She was a perceptive woman, and I bet she figured out that I don't give a rat's ass how she gets home. 

In the car, I watched as Mulder, brows drawn together, watched Scully go, letting her pass from sight within the dense littoral of cars edging the plaza. I didn't know what Mulder was thinking. I was sizzling. When I told the Smoker that Scully was a problem, I didn't lie. But when I told him that I had an idea how to take care of it, all that I meant was that Mulder needed a different type of partner. I succeeded. What was HER problem? She was how old - my age? A year younger? But I think she needed a baby to chide and look after - was Mulder so desperate for someone constantly mothering over him? 

But this was a very useful supposition, to know _where_ I might need to cut off a survival pipeline. It was all her fault! She wasn't careful. She flaunted her ongoing cooperation with Mulder. And he, deliberately or simple-mindedly, did nothing to hide it. Cautiousness wasn't ruling their characters. All of us - me, Mulder and even Skinner - were just variables of different importance in this equation. Did she feel immune? I wasn't an unfeeling villain. But if she suddenly disappeared ... I'd only feel a sweet, longing pity for her. 

With all my force, jealousy coupled with incomprehension and abraded pride, I couldn't start hating her. She was a necessity to Mulder, as opposed to desire. What was he feeling towards her? A black hole there. I didn't ask, and he'd never touched upon this topic, though there were little taboos left undiscussed between me and Mulder: neither of us yet cracked on our first fuck nor the _personality formative experiences_ as Mulder dubbed the family problems baggage. I looked at him and burned, wanted to slice into him with one of Scully's cold little scalpels to get his attention and tell him to at least be man enough to fuck her, instead of this pathetic, noble, idle unspoken love where no one really got anything. 

/He that can have patience can have what he will./ 

So I didn't hurry Mulder to turn his attention to me, nor did I start driving. I took off my suit jacket and didn't care where it landed on the backseat. I adjusted my wardrobe to better match with Mulder's. I was starting to dig his dress fetish. My own jacket had satin lining and beautiful flecks in the marine material of something darker, like ashes in smoke, scattered through the weave. Up close it gave me a top-notch look. Or so Mulder had graded it. Then I turned the AC to the wintry mode. I needed a breather to readjust myself. The day had been a bitch. I heard Mulder heave a sigh of an unclear nature. The side of his neck was shiny with sweat, his damp hair plastered to his skull like soft bark. 

I imagined how gritty and musky he must be all over underneath his clothes. And it made my balls tingle. I wanted to lick him all over. To bite him where I knew he still bore my mark from the previous night - under his left tit. 

"You think Barry made it all up? That he was a pathological liar with shrapnel blasted brains?" Mulder finally went on air, still drilling holes in the windshield with his eyes. 

"Does it matter? He _is_ a psycho." My voice was calm and matter of fact. And that's what Barry was, if only he wasn't so suspiciously _in time_ here. If only I could find out where Barry had been drafted and served, and a few names of his military bosses... my agitated mind was a full contradiction to my tired body. If he was just a half-wit competently attuned pawn, who was the queen? Did I see wolves where there was no forest? 

I haven't been summoned to see the Smoker for almost two weeks now. He seemed to be pleased with me the last time. "I'm doing my best," I stated. His answer was a cold shower, "It is no use saying, `We are doing our best'. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." 

I wondered, with my fingertips cold and slippery, and my tie suddenly cutting off my air supply, if aspiring to hear your partner moan as he comes counts as a career goal and a success in surveillance. 

So was I projecting my own fear of being uncovered? Apart from paying attention to block such suicidal impulses to disclose my state of affairs with my _subject_ , there was something that had been nagging at me the whole time. It started out as a twitch in my brain; the kind of sinking feeling you get when you know you've forgotten something, but you just can't figure out what. Like a name on the tip of my tongue, it would pop up at odd moments, only to disappear when I fought to bring it into focus... 

Mulder turned to me. Disconcerted. 

"Yes, it matters to _me_. I want to know what _you_ think." He sounded urgent, insistent. Through the days of our association Mulder came to praise my critical judgment. I didn't hide from him my belief that Justice was incidental to law and order and that I took very little on faith. When it finally made it past my lips after a pineapple and shrimp fried rice takeout and two dark beers, Mulder laughed hard and clapped me on the shoulder, concurring, telling me that indeed a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum showed that faith did not prove anything. 

"I think... I think you did the right thing, Agent Mulder," I said. I used Scully's words with intent. It had the effect I planned - hoped - it would. Our eyes exchanged unspoken messages that bounced between us like telegraph arcs in immediate recognition of the circumstances they were spoken under. He had told me the same after I shot Cole. The _right thing_. It was like a hard-won Mulder-absolution. "Someone would have been _hurt_ if you continued to play on for him, stretched the time out. He had to go. He's lucky not to have gotten another ounce of lead in his frontal lobe." 

"He will barely be able to spell _luck_ from now on," Mulder snapped, but there was no passion behind his anger. I would never get his ability to sympathize with the psychos he had aided to catch at the cost of his sanity and health. 

"I still wonder why they called me." Mulder propped his head with his elbow and tapped his fingers on his temple, pondering. 

"You have any hostage negotiation practice?" 

"No, barely any at all." Mulder looked childishly puzzled for a moment, then rubbed the corner of his right eye. I barely managed to keep my hands on the steering-wheel to not reach out and cup his face. "It does seem strange the more I think about it." 

"Maybe destiny?" I shrugged, dismissively. 

"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny," Mulder uttered with sarcasm. 

Instead of claming down, I was winding up. He didn't care who was going to have his ass. Well, I came to realize that _I_ did. 

"It's actually thoughtless, how they rushed you. How they talked to you and didn't even hear what you had to say." Was it just a rehearsal, an attempt of testing him or... getting rid of him? Another Agent killed on duty - it was mundane and poignant. A clean job. Fuck, I saw people blown to pieces because of such rash actions. Or because their stupid blind pride or faith or just a skilful hand masked as either, guided them. Accidental, but very timely deaths had solved many a problem. 

Mulder watched me, guardedly balancing between belief, suspicion and sobriety. Whether he wanted to let go or not, his conscience wouldn't. His mind was still processing the events of the day. 

"So _you_ believed Barry? That he indeed is an abductee? And what about evidence then?" 

"Barry might be screwed up and the last nut in the fruitcake, and I don't care about him, but it's the smug way they all treated you with that wanted me to bitch slap them more than once." 

"I'm used to that," Mulder mumbled superficially. "So then it means you _believe_ me?" 

/Why the fuck must I take a side?/ I wanted to growl. /I already _am_ with you!/ On such days, honest moments, I knew how close to the edge I lived my life as the Junior Agent. One simple turn, one word into the _right_ ear, and I'd be gone forever. Or Mulder would point his SIG at my head with an unwavering hand...or will he... falter? 

"I believe that no one has the right to destroy another person's beliefs by demanding empirical evidence," I said with feeling. 

Now, Mulder wore that familiar expression of teetering between his wish to believe me or his inheriting paranoia. Because I was telling him in the face what he wanted to hear so much that it actually scared him when someone said it out loud. 

"He could have gotten you killed." 

In reply to my concern, Mulder shrugged in a _yeah, right_ way, but didn't meet my eye. 

There was emphasis and apprehension in my uneasy voice that was so old, and so forgotten. I was afraid for him - today could have been just a demonstration. Mulder tasted a lot like innocence for a man who worked for the government and had his roots deep in the Capitol Hill parlours and manor houses. He slept and dreamt about conspiracies, but did he guess how powerful they really were? Didn't the offspring of Bill Mulder realize what means and resources those people operated? But then for an experienced, honed and hard-edged FBI agent Mulder had that touch of naivet? that would prove dangerous pitted against the raw pragmatism of the people I knew no names for, but already dubbed as the Clique. But then Mulder would have objected that whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience. What he didn't have to know was that I grew up to always respect authority and never respect those in charge. Because morality, and morality of those bestowed with power, was all about being watched and controlled, and when you are alone, it has a way of wavering or disappearing... 

"You think they called me because I am the first disposable odd-bat on the block?" Mulder tried to make it sound dryly self-deprecating and like he didn't really care. I thought if I reached out and opened his blue medical shirt, I'd see him throbbing and jittering, nerves chafed raw. 

I was not in the mood to play on his jokes or confirm his non compos mentis reputation. He wasn't crazy. This was crystal clear to me since day one. Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy. He was odd, but definitely not a bat. Mulder bore proudly the stigma, believing that he was the Bureau's embarrassment, while I saw who he was. And that's what the Morley man must be aware of. He was the wild card, with intelligence, connections, passion and courage. And Mulder wanted to believe, not just in aliens or boogey-men, but in people. Mulder talked the trust no one talk but he didn't seem to walk the walk. Barry said and Mulder took it to his head: "Honesty... containment... conciliation...." What a bunch of populist crap. Power, authority, domination - that's how they ruled such puppets as Barry. And I would have been calmer if they called Mulder today because he _was_ disposable. 

This was so complicated. More than one wheel was turning, and I must start learning at least how many men ran this show. 

"Whatever we assume, would be guess-work. Or you might demand an explanation from Skinner." 

Mulder huffed in exasperation at my suggestion. Skinner was standoffish. In his chair behind his desk he looked like he would withstand a direct hit by a tactical missile. 

"What I _will_ demand, is my suit back," Mulder remembered that he still wore the medic's uniform. He must have taken his wallet and his cell phone after all the hostages were taken care of and he got a chance to leave, but his office clothes were still there. Clothes. Yeah. Those worth-a-decent-Oldsmobile suits, and hand-made ties that would get anyone tagged as queer right out of the box if worn in the barracks' branch office. Though on Mulder they just looked expensive and kinda smarmy. 

I was prepared to play the fetch boy despite being on my last legs for Mulder, but he waved his hand casually. 

"It's not like they will fit into any of them anyway. I will get them... tomorrow." 

Against my will, I smirked - indeed, I hadn't noticed any guy worthy of my attention there, over the entire evening. But then, I had eyes only for Mulder over the last four weeks. And neither the fascination with his vision nor the intensity of attraction nor the strength of our drive in bed was diminishing. I tried to keep to the short descriptions as much as possible. Accidentally smitten. Pagan chemistry. 

"So, I'm driving you to Hegal?" I asked before my mind could fixate on my unusual constancy of attraction to this man. Or brought back the images of us glowing with sweat and frantic lust, the way he'd grip my slippery ribs and screw himself onto me until we melded like a wet season. 

"No, we are going home." 

The words reverberated through me like a slap on my nape. _Home_? I didn't connect it immediately, my den now is _home_? Since when had Mulder registered his residence as being there? This Saturday will be a month and two weeks since Rhode Island. Mulder has grown on me like ivy on a fence. 

I'd managed to actually swallow the sip of tepid morning Sprite I still had in my plastic cup holder, oblivious to its disgusting taste. I pretty much convinced myself that he'd like to be alone after the shake-up, even if it wasn't by far his first negotiation with screwed-up gunwaving psychos. But then, we had skipped even the offhand invitations when we started ... I barely refrained from thinking _living together_. My verbal non-reacting was the best demonstration that indeed, I got his message. 

I felt Mulder watching me, in his eerie, disturbing way of not actually _looking_ at me. 

I might have gotten away with asking if he was sure, if he was feeling OK, or that tomorrow we must be at work 8:00 am sharp, if my brain hadn't yelled at me to try and sound a little more like a twelve year old girl. 

Or Scully. 

"Horny that much?" A jab that was so predictable from my side that it wasn't even worth an answer. But Mulder made it sound serious. 

"I think I have a problem with that." Our faces were close in the dimness and shadow and I, reacting to that low, even tone and a twinkle in his eyes that together made up his peculiar sensuality, felt a spill of heat descend my body despite myself, despite the circumstances. 

"And I'm the best one to help you?" Now damn, I sounded corny coy, like a well-fucked loose-assed rent boy. Mulder suddenly looked away, confused. 

"I haven't got another date for the evening," he mumbled surly, buckling himself in. It was a predictable reply that only intensified my disturbing loss of nerve at this proposition. I had to stop baiting him. Muder's courting code was peculiar - after we got through the first two _set the rules_ fucks, the blatant flirting from my side, even - only - when securely eye to eye, made him touchy and visibly uncomfortable. Maybe he thought he was too old for this shit. 

"And I won't find someone prettier than you within a ten mile radius anyway," Mulder tried again and it sounded as lame as the first attempt. But I hardly managed to continue breathing when he gave that lazy grin that was less like agreement, more like a dare. 

A grin that made me... Yeah. So, no, I really didn't want to turn that down. 

But I _should_ have said no. Not because I didn't want to fuck him, but because I had to stop giving in. To just _be myself_ was the worst advice I could have right then. I had to remind myself that if just feeling Mulder get out of bed in the middle of the night, watching him get dressed in the dark, sometimes made me want to say things that sounded like _stay_ and _I want you here_ , or worse - _I think they know about us anyway_ \- then thinking about it the days after I woke up, usually killed the impulse pretty quickly while I showered and shaved and dressed and dived into the Junior's routine. It wasn't like Mulder was everything I wanted - hell, sometimes Mulder was nothing like what I wanted. Sometimes I needed Mulder to wear a big fucking sign, *not what Alex Krycek wants, no way, no how*. 

It was just that, a lot of the time, Mulder was just what I needed. Hell, I tried _not_ to notice how he looked at me, above the rim of the towel when he was drying his hair or licking his lips after he took a sip of coffee or lying next to me in bed, both fists under my pillow, his cheek wrinkled - there was both need and want and something else at the very bottom of his look that made me throw my arm around his shoulders and share how I went stealing apples and fell from the tree right on the barb-wire topped fence, ripped my thigh and nearly got my balls in shreds too. Or come up and hold him from behind. Moreover - and this hit me off kilter every time I did it - I wanted to rest against him... and surrender to the weakness of dependence... 

Having caught on to me not having given consent immediately, Mulder fixed his eyes on me. Then he clarified, 

"I have spent hours tied to a chair on an adrenaline overload. Tomorrow I'd not envy anyone in my way if I don't get some." He said it quietly, no wasted air, and I could almost see the words rush from his mouth to my ear. But then that was ok, daytime Mulder was bossy, busy, argumentative and demanding. Transforming now into flippant and a bit callous and covering his limitations with pansexual jokes. My moody wiseass. /Mine./ 

My hand rested on the gear-stick, and his two fingers brushed mine. I looked at myself in the mirror, catching that Mulder's other hand was in his lap, not particularly smoothing his clothes any more. I was looking a little flushed myself, breathing just a little too fast. That's fine - I had had a bad day. But it was my own expression that shocked me -- a sleepyeyed, almost sly smile that I didn't recognize at all. It was a smile that was saying "Yes..." even though I was not entirely sure of the question. You could have called me goo goo eyes at that moment. I felt ludicrous heat creep up my cheeks. 

"Let's go," Mulder lip-synced, as if he was hesitant to say it out loud. 

Then I did that thing... turned on the car-lights and the spell was broken. 

"Anyone tell you you are irresistible in a medical uniform?" I said for the sake of hearing my own voice. I still sounded like me but worse even than usual, clumsier, with crooked words to match my crooked steps. 

"I assume you liked to play doctor with the neighborhood girls, Krycek?" Mulder's voice was cool and with a hint of his usual smugness. 

"No, we used to play pet cemetery," I noted morbidly. He gave me that patented slanted _I'm always watching to see if something will jump on my back_ look of mute wry wonder. I cocked an eye in reply, trying my best to concentrate on not mixing up the pedals. 

We couldn't manage to cut the eye-chatter during the drive. The night was upon us, like a dirty fable. 

Mulder's fingers that were strangely cold at the tips, slid into the back of my suit-pants before I hardly managed to close the entrance door behind us. His hand moved under the elastic of my briefs and the touch of his cool fingers on my own heated flesh was unbearable. Made me moan high in my throat. A sound that made Mulder duck his head sideways and shake it, like a horse in the reins. 

He wasn't so finicky with personal hygiene when it came to arousal salt and summer sweat. His hands were stroking me and I was hard within half a minute, my tongue licking the side of his throat and jawbone in broad brush-strokes, silently mapping the word that was round and thick on my tongue. /Mine./ All of a sudden my need for him became too much for me to fight; I'd played cool all day and could play the dead eye dick all night, but not now. After. Waves of pleasure - they almost hurt - shot through me like whip-strikes. It was impossible to get myself unglued; I slid my arms around his waist and pulled him to me, burying my face in his neck. Oh God, oh God, his smell made me weak, he was all sweaty and dirty, but nothing like the other kinds of sick sweat and human dirt I have seen. 

His sounds of tension long-kept inside, mixed with pleasure, reverberated through my lips. In between words and kisses I felt his harsh breath, wet against my cheek. Mulder's hair was plastered to his forehead and nape, and the blue shirt with the Star of Life - symbol of the paramedics I always found alien to my eyes - was clinging to him. I was used to seeing red crosses and white gowns, frayed and grayish at the cuffs and hems. I stayed with my mother on her shifts, mostly... I wasn't there when... 

Tanks, they said first came the tanks. The heavy chain tracks thundered on Prague's old city cobblestone streets, just like the late summer thunderstorm that was passing through at the same time. But louder, deafening ... and then the main guns entered... I still thought it was the storm's echo, when... 

I didn't have to go memory tripping right then, damnit. 

I needed a distraction because that was just too damn close to what I didn't need to recollect. Mulder learnt too quickly that he drove me frenetic with lust, but this was ... desperation. I never _needed_ anyone like this. Urgently. Didn't need to share... myself. To delay my pleasure till it hurt. Mulder's neck was right there. I dived for it, got that unbelievably soft pale skin between my teeth and sucked. Shocked, still, at the force of Mulder's reaction every time I made it hurt. His loud groans. 

"A...lex?" He was breathing like he'd been underwater. "You're going to... mark me." 

Something about the way Mulder said it made me want to maul his neck. For all to see the obvious. But instead I said, "Sorry." 

"No." Harsh. "Again." And oh, I had to. Bite. Suck. While Mulder struggled against me. I needed more skin. And so did he as he pulled at my lifeless tie. My collar. Open at the throat. More. 

My knee was wedged between his legs and Mulder was holding onto me by my belt, gripping hard and rubbing up against my thigh. His cock was hard, wrapped and stifled in the fabric, pressing against the top of my thigh, and Mulder murmured something when I pulled his hips against me so I could palm his bulge and unwrap it. He was already leaking a bit through his plain white trunks. His arousal sent blood humming behind my ears. Mulder was the type of guy who would get wet after five good strokes if you knew how to touch him. Over the last weeks he didn't make that much noise during sex any more, but he didn't have to. I could judge the level of his arousal by the tone of his as-if-always-sleepclogged -voice or by the slink of his eyes. 

I didn't know who of us wanted to get off faster. But he needed it more than I did. So I didn't fiddle around, just went down on him in the same place as I had done for about a dozen times already, between the bedside table and shower door, my undone shirt sweeping the floor. 

Making. Noises. Mulder's big hands raked through my hair. Twisting excited and hard under me and me urging him on. Letting him thrust up, forcing more flesh into my throat -- my nose pressed flat and sudden into Mulder's soft mound. It was wet there. I knew I was drooling. Horny and hard and flying high on the supplication that was swelling me with a guilty power... 

The damned blue medic shirt caught my eye. The blue snowflake or a star - the symbol of death, for me - always. But I didn't want to remember. That my mother was shot in Prague, in 1968. They said that it was a shooting accident. A drunk Russian solider. And your red cross didn't save her. My step-father, that weak-gutted wimp, Communist ass-licker, did nothing to raise a claim, have that Soviet dick-weed punished. His deference of authorities and laying faint-heartedly low had earned him a stiff backed chair in a backwater dusty little town's municipality. I could have told them, if anyone asked, that demons lived in everything he saw, presences beneath surfaces, evil in mind. But I'd better keep my mouth shut, that's mainly all I ever heard from him, as little as I could understand from the spare words he threw my way. His guilt complex and hatred of himself bounced off me. When my mother was alive, he abused her. When she was dead, he saw her in me. Reincarnation that brought no remorse, only more rancour. 

It was the first time while I was giving head that I had closed my eyes for more than a couple of seconds. Funny spirals and flecks of red and blue danced in the darkness behind my eyelids. My heart thumped as if it was almost under my tongue, servicing my partner's cock. Mulder was past caring, using my mouth as he was wont to and on auto-pilot, by flexing my throat I had him coming thickly within a dozen seconds. 

"Oh God." His knees were too weak to keep him upright and evidently Mulder didn't bother to try. He hit the floor with an oddly satisfying thump and oh. Yes. Much better. I looked up into Mulder's eyes, catching confusion, glee, lust and just the quickest flash of something a little darker. Better? 

"Jesus, Mulder!" He nearly knocked me flat on my back. This psycho wad really had him jacked up to the nines. 

He smiled artlessly. "I need to suck your cock." 

"What?" I stared at him, insensible, gathered enough resolution to wipe my mouth first on my palm then on the hem of his lifeless shirt. 

I still saw blue. I wanted to spit. Barely managed to not cover my eyes at the offensive color. I'd spent my whole life trying to forget those pictures, but now they crowded back into my head: my mom on the kitchen floor, curled up into a ball with her hands protecting her face, the shouting, the blood, the moans of helpless pain, the dull thud of that guy's heavy boots kicking her over and over again. As she asked, "Why? Why?" 

/All in the name of love./ 

Mulder cocked his head at my dispersed attention. His face was wet with sweat. Cheeks flushed. I wondered when that became beauty to me, or if it always was. 

"I said, I need to suck your cock. Now. Right now. Let me?" 

"Not now..." I turned away, rising, stripping the dress-shirt off. I needed off the roller coaster ride. Mulder's arms still stayed hooped around my waist. 

I made a step forward and he pulled me back. I felt him smiling in my nape when he started undoing my belt with slow, careful touches. I turned my head and butted him slightly on the forehead, 

"You heard that I said _no_?" 

I needed a shower. Immediately. I had felt clammy, suddenly cold. Worse - I could smell the formaldehyde, gunpowder and then... cigarettes. 

Finally the penny dropped when Mulder cupped my groin. No more dirty looks or words. 

"Shit happens," Mulder mumbled behind my back, let my waist go and I heard him getting rid of his suit-pants. A man knows how another man functions. He wouldn't make a fuss because I said _no_. Mulder didn't know _why_ \- and I couldn't have cared less what he might have been thinking. So I lost a boner - well, he's had the best usage of every single other one since the day he'd gotten me dismantling half of his summer house. 

I prayed he wouldn't keep the uniform shirt as a talisman. 

The lukewarm water felt great - I never liked it scorching hot or ice-cold like Mulder, but this time he didn't complain, and didn't offer to help me wash anything. But when he asked, I rubbed his back, without sexual implications of touching him anywhere else, and that was even more intimate than all the stuff we had been doing up to that point. And then Mulder turned around and kissed me, hot water and suds running down the sides of our faces. It felt necessary and effortless. Like breathing. 

Benevolent and persistent, he would have continued to bend his line - as if me shooting my load was the primary importance for the remaining night - but I kept as straight of a face as possible and told him that it would be better for him to take a separate towel and let me dry my ass myself. 

After the shower we were sitting in the kitchen, lights off, finishing yesterday's stew I had made. I was remembering from the night before how Mulder commented that he felt good selling his ass for a handful of meat and veggies. And taking him at his word afterwards. Taking him literally against the table, spilling Bonaqua everywhere, colorless liquid splashing and running into old shallow knife-grooves and shattered a plate, in an explosion of blue-trimmed crockery. 

"Wanna have a drink?" I offered. There was still a glass-full of the Red Label bottle on the shelf. It was gleaming with gold translucence in the glow of the setting sun. My mouth was sour - I needed one. A tall, long shot of alcohol right to the gut. Like Mulder himself. 

Mulder who was eating very enthusiastically, put down his fork, 

"No. I don't really have to." He said with reserve. Well if he had to wash the stress down every time he had a run in with a psycho, he'd have had a platinum AA membership card by now. Tough shit. Mulder wasn't the type of guy to drink only to make his friends seem interesting. When I saw him drinking alcohol - once - I assumed by the small signs he made that he knew how to drink. He didn't flinch at a good gulp and he wouldn't go for a snack immediately. 

But I wasn't about to drink alone tonight. The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in alcohol is dignity. I have seen this too many times. This was a tool I have used myself. 

There were two cold Cokes in the fridge. A gift from heaven. I handed him one and popped the lid off another. Then came to sit opposite of him and started hunting peas on my plate. Mulder had already wolfed down his food and was finishing a cheese sandwich. 

"Yep," Mulder said wetly, giving up on dignity at my offering. "Cool is definitely my middle name." 

He squinted, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned. Like a cat who had landed on his feet, Mulder looked ruffled and comfortable and so damn... at home. My eyes, in the flash of split seconds, traced the arcs of his face--the sphinxish eyelids, the imperfect but suitable bend of his nose, the lips whose uneven distribution of flesh lent them a perpetual, rather boyish pout. Not spoiled, but supplicant and amused in turns. 

Why did you have to look like this? To be like this - humanitarian, and brilliant, giving and even kind, exciting, violent and real. What was there in him that had affected me so? You could hang a bookshelf on his nose. And it wasn't just Mulder's looks that didn't jive - his taste in cars sucked, he hated my music, he was walking on eggshells around Scully. We disagreed about sports (me - baseball sucks, him- hockey sucks), clothes (me - suits suck, him- you don't know how to tie a necktie?) and where to order pizza and what to put on it. We were nothing alike, we had little in common - with the real Alex Krycek at least - in fact sometimes I thought that if someone set out to make two people as different as possible, he might have come up with me and Mulder. 

People usually drained me, even the closest of friends I have never had, and I found loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in. With every minute I felt overwrought over something I couldn't pin down, and was getting more uptight watching every shift in his familiar body. He wore nothing but a blue towel to his mid-hip. My mouth watered with another kind of saliva than the one you gather before taking a cock in your mouth. I had lost my appetite. It had been a bad idea to agree to spend the evening together. I agreed to it for him. 

But Mulder had been talking, his head propped up with his hand in his usual manner, as if to himself. Talking about the possibility of how someone could be controlled by aliens, telepathy, hypnosis, possible childhood traumas of that nutcase, Kazdin and that he might have a go and try to check her out... 

My attention was zeroing in on looking inside myself, though. I felt like I was walking toward something that was hidden behind a door. Something was building in my subconscious, something that was a lot more earthshaking than the unsatisfied arousal still blossoming in my gut. All I had to do was open the door. 

Or to lay out the facts. That I liked him. And it went deeper than sex. Deeper than partnership or a common office. Sex was interesting, but not totally important, as my stepaunt once told me. If we had worked apart, I'd still have asked him out. If he was ever sick or far away, I'd be in rut for him. And Mulder was only human - he felt something for me. He demonstrated on occasions that he felt perfectly _fine_ alone, but that the hunger for contact, the need to _connect_ ran in his blood and if left alone for too long, he would be a danger to himself. 

Now why should I care about his complexes and fixations? 

I might have stood up and told him - `it's over'. Extricate myself before my association with him still maintains vestiges of secrecy. But Mulder was not a wimpy limp-wrist not to have asked why. He didn't believe in the suddenness of decisions and in general was a very sensible hot-ass. He'd need arguments. He'd give me silence that I couldn't get over or under or through, and stare me down through my _lets stay friends_ speech, and the stilted good bye in the hallway would be a flop. Or else ... I wouldn't dare to suggest what he says to make me stay. Not the good bye or good luck type speech, however I wished. Good bye and good luck wasn't what either of us wanted, but if it was the only thing we both could live with ... 

"Alex," his voice cut in through my chaotic reflections, "You're not listening." 

Damn! He had caught me slipping away. I might not always listen to Mulder-epics, but I always _heard_ him. 

It would have been useless to lie - he would catch me, and his suspicions would only grow. I knew it wouldn't have saved me anyway because Mulder was giving me one of those looks. Those open, honest waiting looks that made me feel hot and shivery at the same time. Like I was being offered something really dangerous, something that I wanted anyway. 

"No. I was thinking..." 

"About what?" 

"About you." I shot, confronting. 

"Me?" A small reward was that my reply looked like it had caught him unawares. "About me and Barry?" 

Why was he pretending? Mulder was generally direct, too direct in most cases I have observed or read. When I once noted that maybe he was too blunt, he said: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." I bit the tip of my tongue and went on checking the police entries. Damn, what's so great about the truth? Try lying - it's the currency of the world! 

During a few terrible moments of inner insecurities I thought I had been infected by his paranoia. That _Mulder's paranoia_ was just a shield or a joke of his, while mine was real. What if it was just another test for _me_? So is he just waiting to say _gotcha_? What face would he have made if I had told him how afraid I was? 

There was a sudden crash of noise. A fucking cataclysm to match my mood. Louder than hell, something was pulverizing the roof, rattling the building. I had the urge to cover my ears, but Mulder had looked like he didn't even hear it. 

He put his hand along mine. 

"Rain," he commented with relief and too much wonder for a guy who will never see 30 again. Behind the blinds, the windows were being whipped by water. I marvelled at the power of it, the crushing uproar - and the infuriating reminder that some things you can't conquer. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mulder said, raising his voice above the racket. How had he managed to have my wrist in his fingers, his dark eyes at my level? I thought, /Please, call someone to take a picture./ - it was late at night, and gushing rain, he was barely dressed in my towel with his hopeful, intense face and I was having a quick feeling of the world being in chaos, of an emergency and survivalism. I imagined candle light, bottled water, staying in bed to conserve warmth and energy. 

Fuck this! And then they would both die a quiet, hopefully quick death. Two queer fibbies, the rumor-mill will spread it fast. Two idiots with delusions of governmental importance. And they'd say that God hated them. 

"You tell me." Sure, I didn't want to. I was a guy. Didn't he know the usual reaction? The basic behavior pattern? 

"Well, Scully would have called it *unresolved vasocogestive distress", he said. That Mulder had brought her into conversation, even though he wanted to cheer me up, infuriated me. 

"She knows the medical term for fucking everything, anything..." I seethed through clenched teeth. My blood was rising. He didn't know... I can really harm someone when I'm like this. 

Mulder had sensed that I was winding up - his too sharp eye. Mulder slid his fingers and interlocked our hands, as if he had wanted to ground the negative energy he sensed I was accumulating. 

/Shit, let go./ It died on my tongue. So I just sat and watched, trying to understand what was happening to me, to us. 

"You can tell me anything you want, Alex," he said in his best confident agent-voice. But by the way his pupils had dilated, how his eyes were too big, and in the tense set of his head... he was hiding a reaction. His own, worse for me to notice. To prove my suspicion. He was there with me, in the same gator pit. I don't _know_ when he had started thinking of us sharing the last beer and taking a shower and fucking against a wall as _home_. But it has happened. 

It was hair-raising to think of what follies smitten Mulder could achieve. How he could express his lunatic gestures of affection. He was the kind of man to get up in your face and tell you his piece of mind and leave with a bang. A man of passion and principle and of purpose that differed from mine. I was already teetering on the edge of blowing my covers for both sides. And here he would sail into it, in love? Well, I hurried to remind myself that I possessed more self-control. Or so I thought before that particular moment. 

"Sure," I nodded. "Some other time." Not in _this_ lifetime, Mulder. There was suddenly a lot of heat between our hands. Great, now I'm sweating with exasperation. Because my body knew I was lying. Did he? Mulder wasn't taking his eyes off me. They were taking up almost all of his damn fascinating face. 

I was swept up by his passion and mystery. Why not someone else? Another. Woman. 

No. Then it would be _her_. The creamy blouses and maroon skirts, smelling of peach and vanilla that might be Estee Lauder perfumes or simply Tetley tea, and as baked dough when naked. A little sour. I loathed the pain of jealousy, hated myself for feeling it and for letting it guide me, and Mulder for having brought it on. 

I stood up first then, pushing away the plate. It was just funny, really, how quickly anger could shed its skin, suddenly turn into something completely different, almost something just as strong. Mulder got up after me and I wanted action. Immediately. Anything. My problem was that I romanticized him. And that's why he wanted me and no doubt he would use it against me, sooner than later. I was not going to lose it a second time. My cock was already pulsing, jutting with the angry blood. 

"Read my mind, profiler," I issued roughly. 

Part 2. 

There was a breadcrumb or two sticking to his lips when I started kissing him, hard, holding his head, robbing him of movement. This was mindless and primal and tried before - eating his mouth and shoving up against him, pushing Mulder back, hands on his face where the bristles from his nine o'clock shadow were only a little shorter than the hair on the back of his neck. Mulder froze for a sec, the way he always did when I took the lead suddenly which hinted that not all his men-fucks were seventh heaven experiences, but I just waited, liplocked, and yeah, there it was. Permission granted with a sweep of his tongue. 

His towel was left on the kitchen stool, Mulder readily reached into my shorts, applying no pressure, letting my interested dick wander within the loose circle of his fingers, and gently stilled, waiting with abiding patience until I stopped my urgent wiggling and settled my hands full of his still damp, stool-imprinted ass. The way his spine just seemed to melt like snow cones, soft and sweet as warm toffee, and I felt it, felt the zing I always got when that happened - that hot sweet clench right under my balls. It didn't happen the first time back there, in his summerhouse, when we fucked, that slow, sweet melting, but too soon, very soon after that. Wasn't simply a mattress itch Mulder knew how to scratch. 

I didn't mind doing all the job myself. Blurred, twisted yet hot images flooded my mind, forbidden for all they were risky, yet attractive. And my bad _bad_ brain took me right there. 

My 29th REAL birthday. Eleven days ago. 

Naked. 

Fucking. 

After Mulder explained to me the difference between Scotch Highball (scotch, carbonated water and lemon peel) and Scotch Mist (scotch, ice and lemon peel) with endearing nerdiness. No lemon in my sparsely stocked fridge, we settled for His Favourite Unsophisticated Bachelor Scotch and Water. And popcorn. 

By the time he reached describing the ingredients of Scotch Daisy and Fancy Scotch, he was a bit slurring and his hands seem to have a life of his own. And I was dozy yet horny, my tongue thick with a smokey aftertaste and then Mulder, bare-chested, was on his knees by the bed, his mouth level with my crotch, my crumpled white shirt open to the navel and pulling out my belt, brushing over my cock with deliberate roughness: 

"You've got your cuffs somewhere close?" 

That got my attention, dispersing the vestiges of sleep. I nodded, shaky-breathed, watching his eyes turn ten shades of lewd amber and... 

"You will chicken out," I braved him, because I had to try at least so Mulder would know I didn't want this, not in my head or in my heart where it mattered, even if my stupid body had other ideas. 

Total control. The threat of pain. Mulder was not used to this, being treated like rubbish. Taken and used and begging for what he was wont taken for granted. 

"And you? Ever stretched the issues of consent? Or should we play "rock, paper, scissors"?" 

And we did. Play. Mine was the rock...and I started with setting the first rule of the night; no speaking until spoken to, but it was soon after that I made it so that he couldn't speak however much he tried to... Mulder wore a shirt with too wide wrist-cuffs the next morning that disrupted his style, and the sharp intakes of his breath when he raised from his chair made my ears burn. I couldn't meet his eyes when in the parking lot he suggested we take a break tonight. I thought /That's it. He'll never let you touch him again. At least you made him come four times./ But then Mulder mumbled wryly that he needed some *beauty sleep* and that he didn't hold me accountable for his sore ass and chafed wrists or even for having ruined his tie as a makeshift gag... He got exactly what he set off. 

Nothing fixed a thing so intensely in my memory as the wish to forget it... 

Maybe he remembered that too - the sometimes silence spoke louder than words. And I was afraid to open my mouth. 

The first to sit down on the bed, Mulder leant down to service my up-sans-problems cock, but I evaded him gracelessly, picking out the lube from the drawer, with clear implication. On his back, flat on the bed, Mulder opened his legs for me at the first touch of my lips. The tension in my neck and the stretch of my tongue, the texture of skin and hairs getting in my mouth, it distracted me from the disturbed bees of my recently stormy conscience. Mulder started stroking himself slowly, languorously and with much practice, a relative silence of building arousal ready to be disrupted. 

Suddenly his silence was another deliberate challenge. I started to lick at him, making noises. I think I ate him with a gusto reserved for the nuptials. It made me smirk, for a second. When he started pushing his wet ass into my face, I switched to lubed fingers, licking the length of his ample cock. His body was curved back from the pleasure of it, his legs began to tremble, tensing, arms arched above his head. He was wont to do that - to get hold of my headboard with both hands when we fucked really hard, or with one when it was not so frenzied, but usually noisier, and he muffled his own pleasure in his forearm. I think he had about several healed scars there, the first not mine to blame for... 

So I sucked his cock in, determined that I should have him like he thought he had me, controlled with flicks of my tongue, trying all I'm best at, fast and slow licks, into the slit and around the head, hard sucking then softer, all hot tastes of him. When I backed away, Mulder couldn't stop a keening moan, while I had managed to gulp down mine. His cock was gleaming so wet from my mouth it was almost dripping. 

Then I sat up, slapped his thigh once, then laid on my side along his sprawled body, slick slippery fingers messing him up more, stoking his debauchery. Mulder's sultry laxness roused me with tender power, and despite my yen for freedom and a concern for my life, I responded to his physical trust. 

"You'd let me do anything I want right now." I leaned on my elbow above him, my open mouth poised above his. I held my breath, Mulder's face was tense with arousal as he answered. 

"Yes." There was something different in him tonight - he was too serious with desire, his mosaic eyes charting my torso, pupils black with ardour, his expression not teasing, but earnest. 

"Would you tell me anything I want?" I was offering an easy bait to crack my desires and intent open, but I could get the bank if he says... if only he says ... 

A pause, a small slice of quiet. I was mesmerized by expectation and the dizzy smell of our sweat. 

Then Mulder laughed. He didn't sound happy at all. All of a sudden, he sat up as graceful as possible for another guy stroking his cock, leaning into my face. Cheek pressed to cheek. Breathing me in. When I let him have my mouth, he cupped my cranium and pressed me in roughly. Was it a non-verbal, Mulder-coded reply? The nonsensical revelation of him being enamoured with me visited me again, as my own cardiac thrum echoed the little shudders running through Mulder. Now I _was_ sure what it was about -- all the tension. All the halfwords and pregnant looks and laughs that masked an inability to speak one's mind. Like Mulder was fighting with himself maybe or... 

Oh no... 

Fighting _against_ me? 

"Tell me how you feel about me," I challenged, wetly. 

Mulder broke his suction on me with a delicate slurp, answered immediately, startling me: 

"Oh, Elvis did it a long time ago, better than me: You give me fever when you kiss me   
Fever when you hold me tight   
Fever in the morning   
Fever all through the night," he half-sang, half-droned. He let his naked hips press to mine in the same rhythm he quoted the King. 

"Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade...I think we're close to melting," he was holding both our cocks and stripping them in an unbearable, practiced slow rhythm. 

The trouble with resisting temptation was that it might never come your way again. I kept repeating to myself that he just knows too many of those faggy `how to turn your brains into cum' tricks...and that's all. I felt the tiny droplets of sweat gather on my nape and in the clavicle hollow, melting their way down my body. With every drip my resolve and makebelieve facade thinned. It was all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back. And I was in a panic that I couldn't and would never be able too... 

"So? What takes _you_ there, Alex?" Mulder squinted, immediately taking advantage of my perplexity. His face was all cubistic, a strong jaw and Grecian nose and lascivious sedition. I shuddered at how he managed to switch his own facial impression. Where? How far will I go for him? How _far_ would he want me to? And it's his way out, right there, that smile. If I told him... will he be letting me off the hook, letting it be just friends, brothers, whatever. 

And the rest? My plans, my ambitions, my fucking _future_? My life? 

"Tell me, tell me, tell me", I couldn't make out if he was whispering it or if it was an echo in my head. He was in dismay and desire that I wasn't cracking. And then Mulder's hand was on my cheek, curving around my skull, fingers through my hair -- not pulling me in but rising to him, lips to his lips, mouth opening against mouth. His chest, hot like an animal's, pressed against mine. 

His eyes were fast on mine, dilated, like he was mesmerized. Pressurising. Transmitting one message: /fuck, fuck, fuck, c'mon Alex. Get to it, whatever it is, whatever it is you gotta say, spit it out, spit it out, spit it out./ 

My mouth was slick with Mulder, it was messy and awkward, and the angle he held my neck, hurt...Such a wild feeling, like Mulder was loose inside his own skin. Like he needed something solid to push against. 

Me? 

I closed my eyes and realized they were closed, and opened them again... 

I shook my head, helplessly. The truth was ready to come out, so he would know, even though he had to know already. I couldn't bear not being able to say it: do you love me? Will you believe me? Will you take me as I am? and it left me alone in that dark, buzzing place inside my head. 

Panic. I nearly drowned in the military boarding school pool when I was 11. I haven't felt that helpless since, not even under fire, not under someone holding a gun to my temple and leaving a scar on my back for not being able to get off. Because I didn't beg for it then. Didn't cry. But now I wanted to scream. 

I pushed away frantically, Mulder groaned at the wet suck of another kiss breaking. That's not what he expected. A demented wet dream was turning into a sparring mind-fuck. He studied me with a wry sad half-smile on his lips. Lips that stayed parted, shiny. Claret. A weird word I picked up reading a wine guide once. I felt myself swaying toward them, panting, forehead resting against Mulder's damp forehead. 

The kiss Mulder gave me was unrestrained, almost vicious and I gave it back, just as vicious, but more desperate, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, grinding my cock against him. 

I could barely speak: 

"Face down." 

Or else I'm gonna break. Something. 

He rolled back finally and our slick flesh slapped, while my teeth sank into his shoulder. I didn't want to be the best lay on the block. I wanted to take my pleasure, like I did before. Or like I did earlier, clumsy and selfishly. I wanted to put him back in line, just like he had tried that second time with me. It might work for me. 

I took him without much finesse this time, but with enough consideration not to hurt. Badly. I went slowly, but picking up speed and depth of thrusts, his shoulders arching. It felt like winning but I knew better. I've got that weak core, and I needed something outside myself to stabilize it. Turn the tables: Mulder needed me to get off, and I needed no one. 

I stretched out on him, his thighs spread with my knees and practically did nothing. It was cruel, selfish fun to watch him get himself all worked-up and hot over it; his dick is rockhard in two minutes, not much effort required. 

This used to work - hurt them, they'd go away. Worked even better than humoring or scaring them. So that's what I wanted to reach. To be satisfied with what's around me. Let him do the job. Beg me. Make me indispensable. 

"Just tell me when you're ready," I said, and took an effort to tilt my hips to thrust right _there_ , how I learnt to orient myself on his body and give one good lick from his nape to as low as I could bend. 

He sucked in a sudden, wet breath and rolled his hips back against me. Kept biting his lips and clenching his jaw and not getting what he wanted and more than a bit in pain by now. It was so fucking hot to watch him squirm and moan on my dick; those slim hips jerking up for more, pushing all the pillows and covers to the floor. 

Mulder rolled his face into the mattress and grated out a sob as I knew I nailed the sweet spot, and then I reached a hand to Mulder's neck and slid it around. This wasn't what we did often. Just a couple of times. Again. For. Me. I pulled Mulder up so that he could feel the power of my command and what it was I /wanted/ to tell him: /I'd do this to you because I _could_ , I can make you do everything I want./ 

_Oh,_ I barely heard it. One word, puffed out on an exhalation. His shoulders bunched with tension. 

"Oh, you fucker," Mulder said again; whimpered, really. I bent my head and sank my teeth into his trapezius. His skin was sharp with salt. He barked a sharp, wordless cry and it didn't actually take that long before he begged, "Fuck, give it to me already." He was shivering, thrusting back onto my dick. I failed a small effort to ignore his plea, started to move, in rough and spastic thrusts, sliding in and out of that tight, hot ass and wanting nothing more than to pump myself empty into it without any sentiments, to empty and be left empty. 

But it wouldn't go away, the weight of _togetherness_. 

I let go of his right wrist, giving just a pause for Mulder to put his hand between his legs. Heard him muttering _fuck, fuck, fuck_ into the sheet as he finally got to jerk himself and was burning. There was so much power in doing it, in making him moan like he was hurting too much, that it was almost better than having him do it to me. 

I felt like I might fly apart. 

I felt as if I could fly only to crash horribly down. 

In love. Yeah, it happens, sucker. 

I came first, hard, like a gunshot, butting his nape, and felt his tremor, and his moan. 

"Fuck," Mulder repeated again and sagged, then turned onto his back, heavily, his right hand still holding his cock, his fingers milky. His chest was heaving, breath ragged, teeth tearing at the lower lip. The free hand went over his eyes. 

"Fuck _you_ ," he panted, and there was a thread of sob in his sound. It made me want to lay on top of him and kiss his hands. 

I swallowed. What kind of bastard am I? For just a second I felt ill--fed up not only with my assignment, but entire involvement and scared for my soul. I had to look quickly to one side, to break away from that awful, open gaze. 

Mulder finally uncovered his face. His eyes were wide and held tiny drops of moisture from the reflexive tears. 

"God I could kill YOU," he said with such force that it burnt my face with his angry breath. "It's not MY fault that you can't tell ME in the face what you think of ME." 

I turned to the pillows on the floor and nudged one hard with my bare foot, as if it was responsible for Mulder's perseverance and worse, that it was responsible for my failings. 

/It's safer that way. / I nearly betrayed myself saying this aloud. /Safer? If you wanted it then say you wouldn't be letting him come here for a month in a row. You would be alone. Maybe fucking a pretty closeted boy clerk or two who'd do whatever you tell them to."/ 

I heard Mulder take a long, shaky breath, getting up as the bed creaked. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, I took his semen-smeared hand and covered it with mine. I felt weak, powerless, sick with affection. My mouth tasted like an old wound. 

"Alex." I tensed. I was ready to take any non-life-threatening amounts of violence from him to repay me for debasing him like this. 

I looked over, making a mocking, inquiring face at him. "Fox?" 

"Don't--" Mulder began angrily, then caught himself, hesitated. His jaw twitched. "It's not all your fault. I was high-pressuring you. You don't have to--" 

"Mulder, don't go there." I breathed and focused. This could be fixed if I could just figure out what to say or do. 

He shifted restlessly, eyes stinging my cheek, apparently stalling an impulse to punch me like an uncaringly fucked guy should. He was still stiff with anger, but he spoke slowly, as I sat looking at my knuckles brushing his bare chafed knee. 

"This is not the right way to make me a tool of self denial or self discipline. Was it what you were thinking about?" 

"I wasn't thinking." A cheap, rash back talk. 

"You are too _smart_ not to think," Mulder nearly moaned. "Were you thinking on what you were feeling? " 

"I have to think," I resisted. It looked like we both knew the subject of this tortured conversation, but pretend to construe some after-stress effect. Light residual psychological trauma. "One of us has to." Sounded more like a stubborn argument to me. 

"You have to rationalize?" Mulder probed more. 

I nodded. I felt daunted. It was scary and new - risking my objectives for a pipe dream. Or even considering the risk. 

"Feelings are NOT supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who rationalizes his emotions." 

Lamplight was on his knee, on my clenched hands, on the side of his distorted face, not that I was looking. 

"Don't think Alex. What did you feel?" 

"I was angry." Oh, the perfect excuse. And it should work on him because I hardly ever was angry with Mulder. 

"So you needed this? To _fuck out_ _your_ adrenaline? Forced power play to compensate for pneumatic dick malfunction? That's what's been keeping you down?" Relief came as a tide of cool wind down my back, though the window was closed. Again, Mulder was demonstrating his trait to ask and explain things to himself by himself. It was very convenient, that I didn't have to explain much and let him take his own suggestion for truth, but when I came to think about what if I can't dissuade him when he assumes _wrong_... 

"Why couldn't you just tell me?" His voice rang in my ears although he wasn't yelling. 

"So that you can feel powerful?" I snorted. 

"Is that so wrong? Or ... is it so bad?" 

"Not wrong. Not bad. It's not about that. Just... I'm sorry." I said it without thinking, not even sure what I meant. Because I didn't actually feel sorry. I was _protecting_ myself. 

"Next time just say it. That you were wound up. Or worried. It's not a shame to be afraid. And communication can make wonders." Mulder grumbled. He tried to sound fierce, but I thought he just sounded pathetic and tired. 

Seeing my averted face, he sighed: 

"I'd have been stressed out to, if you were there." Mulder's voice was void of doubt. He gave my side a small pat. His hand was hotter than I was and I wanted to melt into it. I could not give him too much hope just to have it ruined possibly shortly thereafter. I had a heart, and I had to keep it off my sleeve. But I turned my head and kissed his hand. 

Small gestures of queer affection mollified Mulder. My tough Agent man was such a pussycat inside. When Mulder raised his head to look at me, his face was taut, but he looked as abashed as I felt, and something inside of me started to bloom. 

"We should change the sheets," I said eventually. Mulder looked like he wasn't planning to move anytime soon, and was not really up to talking right now either, so he just lifted a middle finger to express his sentiments. 

But I had to sleep here, even if he would take off after thirty minutes of napping. I got up and dragged the sheets out from under him, son of a bitch. He lobbed a pillow at my head and got up, rubbing the small of his back. He went to the kitchen and we shared some cold tap water, then gave me one heart-felt, sudden slap on the neck. Good-natured, because it practically didn't hurt. 

"I'm going to do you tomorrow evening," Mulder said, the calm confidence in his voice pissing me off more than a petty symbolical act of violence. Whatever it meant for him, Mulder clutched to this pretence that he was not going to be the bottom boy in this relationship, even if he told me that I fuck like a champion. 

And whatever... it stopped and transformed, without me much minding, into supplicant when I had to give in. I knew how this would happen - he will drive me nuts with his mouth, licking my shoulders, my neck, my chest, then would lower himself to suck on my hip, using his hands more and more, splaying fingers squeezing my thighs, the sides of my ass, never my cock. And I would open my legs and would do what he would say, because some needs were not worth fighting. Eventually I'd climb on his lap and fuck him hard, pushing off his hands and turning the tables. Gravity would be one hell of assistance, and I would feel like being nailed from inside out. My thighs would be burning with the effort and Mulder would be going blind with lust and pleasure under me, eventually sitting up, chests meeting like two bows. 

"Squeeze -- squeeze down," Mulder would be repeating, choking. "Make me come; yeah, do it, you gorgeous -- fucking -- cunt -- " and oh fuck, _that_ would actually do it, and I would be coming all over his chest and neck at the single pull of Mulder's fingers, split seconds later I would feel Mulder pumping into me... 

Unbidden, the thought of my alarm clock loomed on the horizon. Mulder mumbled he would stay till midnight, then burrowed deeper under the sheet, his frown smoothing with intoxicated exhaustion. At least we were still thinking on the same lines there, right? I tried to let the thoughts of Mulder and how I tried and failed to set him against me move away, yet they would not resolve into sleep. 

So I was certifiably in love. The timing was...just crap-tacular. How the high and mighty do fall. My heart pounded when I thought wonderingly of Mulder. I insisted we were just friends so adamantly, I'd actually had myself convinced of it. Friends with benefits was something nice and safe, no commitments, no prison cell to get locked up in. But now I saw my cynicism for what it was; break it down and there was nothing but fear. I never let anyone really know me. I'd let some of my walls down for Mulder and he didn't draw back in apprehension or lack of interest, he didn't despise me for being a perfect pretender, a queer selfish bastard who planned a career. But I was still afraid. 

Of course it had something to do with my childhood; I mean, doesn't everything? My mother loved my dick-weed of a stepfather more than me. What for? Had I loved him even a bit, I would probably have blamed her less. Instead of protecting me from her own husband, a predator she'd brought through the door herself, she withdrew into her work, a pseudo-asylum and occasionally wine, blinding herself to the truth. 

My step-aunt fled to Germany taking me with her, a five year old dyslexic underfed boy, a year before that maggot dick would shoot himself. She hated her demonstratively proletarian brother and his sudden marriage to a soft-hearted medical nurse with a five year old one-night stand spit-off. I learnt only much, much later what was obvious to everyone who cared to notice - that that always bored, bloated, chain-smoking grouch wasn't my father. Not a single hair or skin cell on me resembled his. Not related by blood, I found a next of kin. Aunt Milena, the Steel Lady of towering stature and with eyes the colour of cold ashes. Long, warped roots planted in the aristocracy of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, too early a widow of a colonel who shook Mussolini's hand. She was suffering from osteoporosis, and spoke four languages like a native. The rare quintessence of the motto toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles. In West Berlin she had quickly become the center of the expat community who mainly were occupied by smuggling the forbidden fruits of Levis, Nescafe and Stimorol to Poland and my own ex-motherland. 

Since then,   
everything in my life has been named, plotted and organized. Except that her sudden attachment to me surprised us both. Milena did her best with me, always, but we shared a piece of metal in our hearts which made backing down nearly impossible. She raised me a bastard and aggressively anti-Communist, but so handsome her cohort almost didn't mind, even when I did something conspicuously confrontational and rude. My first real kiss had happened when I was fourteen. Male, Warm with a lingering, bitter aftertaste of coffee. No wandering hands, but there was quite a bit of clinging going on. 

My step-uncle Milosh, being twelve years younger then Milena was a babe magnet, just from the wrong end. He had taught me to suck dick before that, actually even before I got my first bicycle. Later on, when I understood what child abuse meant, it didn't matter what he had cajoled me into doing when I was frightened and supplicant, forgetting Czech and hadn't yet learnt enough German or English to tell Milena. I didn't hate him for what he did to me. Well, maybe a little before I learnt to manipulate his desire and made him beg for me. But honestly, I had to take some blame. I used him to make me feel better. He was the only one who had ever tried and I sucked him dry. 

Oh, Freudian slip of the tongue. I smirked weakly in the pillow. But it was a handy practice, and I liked it and used it to get what I wanted. Fuck or die situations happened too. With rotten empty men left alone, you never can tell what they'll do. Since my eight day experience being a hostage in Israel, during my lamentably short intermission with the German diplomatic corpse in 1984, I always despised men who saw perversion in others. It said so much about their own desires. 

So Milena took charge of my education after having taught me herself up to when I was ten, and Milosh was such a soft-wrist and so smitten by me by the time I turned fourteen it was embarrassing in public. But he was the secretary to one of the bumps in the Foreign Affairs Office and they got me a scholarship arranged in a semi-military boarding school. With her teeth clenched, Milena groomed me for a career in the army. I have got no taste for killing, from a distance or through a sniper rifle. But I chose politics, the petty art of screwing your neighbour before he screws you. All of these tiny steps to avenge tiny wrongs. 

Did I project my dysfunctional childhood experiments on my interpersonal relationships, Mulder would have asked? 

Every relationship wasn't abusive, I knew that. Every now and then someone I knew would be really happy with their lover. Still, most of them were fucking miserable, tied to unhappy relationships with a million threads, just waiting for the moment when something came along and blew it to smithereens like a grenade. And I swore it would never happen to me. It was hard to imagine my life any other way now, though. Despite how it seemed to have come out of the blue, this was the life I chose. 

Yeah. It didn't feel bad now to remember. I was self-aware enough to know that I had fashioned a channel for my own denial - though I honestly didn't know what to do otherwise. I could NOT pretend any more that I wasn't in bed with a man who made me feel like I wanted a home for the first time in 10 years. My aunt's voice chimed in the oh-sohelpful advice of _just face up to it, son_ , which while useful, did not really aid the issue at hand. I couldn't face it and I obviously was not mentally prepared for the task of telling him. That's it. I don't. It was difficult to concentrate on staying impartial, keeping us separate in a small space where all reminded me of sex. The sheets smelt like him, of come, sweat and the wet freshness of his hair. 

My teeth hurt from how hard I have gritted them and I couldn't contain a spasm of muscles, wrapping the sheet around me. 

Almost startling me, Mulder's arm took my elbow and tugged me back, so that I flopped on my back, facing him. Only about half an hour passed while I lay musing, but Mulder seemed to be awake now. Preparing to take leave, as usual? Trying not to think of the blue shirt, I supposed to tell him he could take one of mine till tomorrow. Yet I found myself absorbed in watching his mouth. His lips were parted to let in each deep breath. When he smiled down at me, the lines framing one side of his mouth deepened. Mulder moistened his lips, a quick flash of tongue. I finally looked at his eyes. From this angle, they were shadowed. I could make out the darker shadow of his lashes, the slight reflection of street light off the cornea. 

"Why did you leave the behaviorists, Mulder?" I asked because it seemed so important to keep him here. 

"Because of irreconcilable differences and my wish to open XFs." Mulder answered smoothly, yet without a sign of surprise at my sudden inquiry. 

I snorted - don't talk to me like you are in front of the HR committee, baby. Mulder knew I won't be satisfied by it. He just cited his private file. 

"You decided to put my communication advice in use?" Mulder inquired ironically. He lay looking at me, still wearing the hot, rapturous look he had on his face after he'd come. "No. I don't know. Maybe," I said, shrugging. "I guess I'm trying to make sense of you, and I can't. Because I'm ... working with you," I added. 

/Just trying to understand my subject./ 

"What don't you understand?" 

"You're not afraid to speak your mind. You don't put up with bullshit. You're very physical. It's--look, I'm going to be honest." 

Mulder smiled tightly at that. "You make it sound so _special_." And something turned inside me, a spring wound too tight. I hurried to ask before Mulder could elaborate if and when I'm NOT honest with him. 

"I don't understand why you're in the Basement. It doesn't make sense to me. It's like every part of you is designed to be something else, and I can't figure out what's keeping you here." 

"I ask because by now you could have been a Department Head. They were paying you how many times more than for the X-Files, you have been brilliant with Patterson..." I was speaking with vehemence, but I truly wanted to understand. "... they were putting food themselves in that fucking pretty mouth of yours and you pushed them away? What kind of differences those could have been?" 

"I didn't want to give them any ideas they could put more than food in my mouth," Mulder retorted, and I saw his jaw clench. 

"I didn't believe rumours in the Academy..." 

"They would be?" 

"That Patterson walked in on you with his pretty young wife." 

The rolled eyes were the only sign Mulder, evidently amused and habituated to this theory, gave me. 

"What? Was it that his wife walked in on you and him?" 

Mulder gave out a short disparaging laugh. 

"Patterson was straight." 

I relied on the weapon of arching my brows. Then I blinked and stared at Mulder, in expectation. When I decided that, why did I really need to know that except for satisfying my curiosity, Mulder spoke up: 

"Patterson's wife had a problem with alcohol. She felt neglected and kept blaming _me_ for that." 

"She thought you were hitting on your boss?" 

"I wasn't. God, Alex, Patterson was at the opposite end of who I'd ever be hitting on." 

I shook my head. I wasn't getting it. And I also wondered that Mulder indulged my curiosity. Usually he didn't. But then, I paid him in the same coin. 

"I was the one without family or permanent girlfriends. We took all the cases others rejected. We spent a lot of time together, yeah... we did." 

I saw Mulder flexing his thighs and shin muscles under the sheet that covered him up to the waist. For the last three weeks we have been fucking five nights of seven weekly. I wondered indeed how he felt after half of the nights on all fours or his back. But then, he has the smoothest abs I have seen on a guy. After myself. When I asked once, if he was ok, he said, thoughtfully, "I wish I owed kneepads." 

Remembering this still made me smile... 

"What did happen then?" I was really puzzled. Mulder finally turned to look at me, his hair in a mess, supporting his head on his elbow. 

"His wife had insulted me. I hit her, even though it was obvious she was not quite herself." 

I knew I looked sheepishly disbelieving, even silly with my mouth open, but indeed, this was a surprise. This wasn't like Mulder - to hit a woman. Obviously enjoying the effect of having perplexed me, Mulder elaborated: 

"She said that I was a psycho. That I had killed my own sister and that they covered it up like it was an accident. She could have heard that only from Patterson. I once admitted this fear on an early psychological assessment session. That he would break the confidentiality meant he broke my trust." 

"You ever tell him you love to suck dick?" For the first time of our association I allowed myself to poke the murky waters of his sexual adventurousness. 

Mulder cut me a sharp glance for my deliberate bluntness, but be it the mood or the day, he suddenly enlightened me of his sex life. 

"We have never had a discussion on that, old Pat was hard to shock. He once told me what I had long suspected and what Alfred Kinsey had proved statistically back in the 40s: everyone was doing it however, wherever, whenever and with whomever they possibly could. It didn't matter what he knew, and others were beginning to realise that you don't have to be straight to be in the FBI; you just have to be able to _shoot_ straight. Other difficult issues accumulated. Distrust at our projects being a failure changed us for the better, while success of our methods changed him for the worse. Not that he lied to me, but that I no longer believed him - that was what had distressed me. Eventually, we started to argue at every word..." 

Mulder fell silent, his eyes fixed on me, apparently signalling that the rest was history. Now, that was indeed more than I expected ever to hear. But I tested my luck, and asked: 

"You had many...?" 

This time Mulder answered in his rare fashion of saying a lot, but not exactly answering the question: 

"I'm a veteran of great dry spells of sexual somnambulism. Then periodically I was plunged into a vortex of erotic preoccupations by seemingly random strangers or non-interest acquaintances. I thought straight dating was a horror, but gay dating was revolting enough to make me think I should've stayed in the damned closet. It bothered and perplexed me enough that I found myself home alone at night, just like before. The only difference was, I had discovered exactly how much gay porn was available on the internet, and I renewed my lagging friendship with my right hand... Anything else is salient enough for you to discuss?" 

I didn't test my luck further: Mulder was beginning to crank up. So I just shook my head and so we lay side by side, listening to the rain still whispering outside. Somewhere the ambulance was howling. 

Just when I thought he was asleep, his monotone reached me again: 

"You shouldn't behave so conspicuously around Scully." 

I raised my brow. 

"Please, don't try these theatrics on me. Your attitude needs no words. Body language." I wanted to par if he noticed his. Like a guilty older brother's. 

"She came today to use another opportunity to prove you wrong." 

"She keeps me grounded, and mostly her research sobers me. Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. A handy saying by Voltaire." 

Well, I wanted to blurt, I am not a walking quote-book and I didn't approve her attitude, but I was taught well not to let my temper rule my tongue. 

"She saved my life." It sounded like the terminal argument. I percepted that I must feel guilty because I didn't have an opportunity so far. Will I? But the more I thought about it - I knew that possibly saving his life will mean to radically change mine. I didn't know the payback, I could only hope. And this was reserved for the losers. Mulder was too human, not a perfect specimen to keep all my hopes and dreams together. 

"Whatever..." those were too dangerous grounds to thread now. "I don't care about her. But indeed Scully gives new meaning to the notions _duty_ and _efficient_. 

"I dare say she beats yours. And she definitely misses on one point...Discretion is being able to raise your eyebrow instead of your voice." 

"It still pisses you off?" 

"No... it... appals me." I didn't understand exactly what he was speaking about. But Mulder gave me no time to think it over, adding, "If you think shit of her, Alex, don't let me learn." 

"I _don't_ think of her at all." I sounded as if caught red-handed. 

But Mulder kept bending his line. 

"I'm not her man. Not on her list. And I'm not having a platonic crush on her, nor do I desire her." 

"Why are you telling me this?" The choice of his word - _desire_ again stuck me as unusual. 

"Obviously, because I want you to know," he replied evenly. Too evenly for the heated conversation we were just coming down from. "I'm kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people plotting to make me happy." Mulder smiled a close-mouth smile, giving me a moment to process what he just said, a condescending trait I disliked but frankly found necessary when Mulder came jetting into the room via emotional Tangent Airlines on frequent flyer miles. 

"I'm sorry it was obvious," I mumbled. I saw Scully drawn to Mulder's orbit, tethered to her by his focused attention. I wondered if that was what I looked like to others when I had latched on to Mulder. At first I have been too much part of the dynamic and distanced to get a glimpse from the outside, but now I suspected that's how it had appeared. My tacit admiration for Mulder who delivered this to me, had spiralled. 

"Don't worry about it that hard." Another Mulder zigzag, from thin-lipped anger to brilliant friendliness on a dime. I guess because I have repeated my apologies for three years in advance. "I just wanted to give you an early warning. Unless there's something else you're sorry for, Alex?" 

"I guess I'm not sorry for anything any more. I wish you went comatose after shooting your load." 

"Maybe you should be." Mulder didn't let himself be derailed. 

"You're not making any sense. Sometimes it doesn't feel like you're even talking to me, Mulder. I don't even know what you're talking about." 

"No, of course you don't." 

"Don't be mad." 

"Why should I be mad? 

"You don't have to trust me. No one else does." 

"Everyone has secrets, Alex." Mulder crossed his fingers and supported his chin on the palms, hsi voice intimate and knowing. I felt something new and awful, like Mulder had scissors and snipped off a piece of me every time I opened my mouth. 

"You really do know everything, don't you?" I parried, letting a noticeable trickle of antagonism to show in my voice. 

"Not everything," he said. "Not how you feel about me." 

Now, that was a straight shot. I felt like he has punched me into the corner. 

Mulder stopped playing with his thumbs and leaned against the bolster. He cocked his head to the side and drew his brows together, but didn't speak for a full minute. I had to turn from his gaze, the power of which unnerved me. A guilty conscience needs no accuser. It was an expression I'd seen him wear in every interrogation we'd conducted together - he was piecing together a picture and verifying the facts. It was this very perceptiveness on which I had been counting. Surely now I wouldn't have to find the words on my own. 

"Mulder, I'm here, aren't I? I'm here and at work and everywhere with your every day. You have to know what that means. I'm not faking a single thing." Last phrase left a taste on my tongue as if I have cut it. Sharp and sour. I couldn't convince myself that this was all in the name of good. It seemed important to move, though, to say something, to admit freely what I felt, how much I wanted him, that from the start some primitive need existed between us. 

I couldn't trust the words. His short messy hair that wasn't long enough to get into his face cast just enough shadow to look like it was doing just that. Enough that I reached out to smooth it back and got a palmful of skin instead. I made a move, then stopped abruptly. By his face, I couldn't guess if Mulder was much amused or faintly troubled by my wavering. Then he put his hand lightly on my chest: 

"It's ok..." he started. His fingers twirled in the patch of my chest hair. "I need you to understand..." he started quietly. 

"No," I said firmly. "Our disagreements cannot be fixed by sex. Can they?" 

Mulder frowned, pursed his lips and said gently, 

"I don't want sex, asshole. I want to be close to you while we talk." 

The simplicity of it disarmed me, I bent my head to taste his skin again, wanting to see if something has changed. My teeth nipped, almost without my permission... Still kissing and he unfolded, wrapping one leg around the back of my thigh, hands squeezing and kneading and roaming all lost over my back. 

"Is this okay?" I whispered beside Mulder's ear. 

"Anything you do with me is okay." 

"Riight." 

"I mean it, Alex. _Anything_." Making a hot shiver run through me. Again. Whenever he said my name. Wherever we end, I'm terrified it won't change. 

Anything. I had no power to speak. And Mulder's silence was wonderful to listen to. 

"Did you get what you wanted?" I said finally, when he slipped off me and curled up, my forehead to his damp nape. 

Mulder turned and looked, "Not everything. It's a start. The rest can wait." 

I went instantly rigid, tried not to, and could not. A start? I already felt like I was tumbledried. Truly, gravitation was not responsible for people falling in love. 

"Okay," I said then, trying not to pull away too fast, not to be rude about it because I really didn't need Mulder to see how much I couldn't deal. "Okay, I know I'm not very--" 

Mulder's hand tightened in my hair. 

"I mean I still want more, Alex. From you. I want a fucking _lot_ ", Mulder sighed. 

Maybe more than he could ever handle. But time was the wisest councillor of all. The clock blinked twenty minutes past midnight. He didn't look like he was leaving soon. In his overt fashion, Mulder was giving me a choice of asking him to leave or to invite him in. I bit on the tip of my tongue and did neither. When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. I felt like I was signing on the dotted line, on a parchment that smelt of Morleys and stale ink: "guilty as charged". But I owed Mulder this - the silent declaration. 

The back of his neck smelled like a distant home. With my face pressed against it I could feel the vibrations of his voice against my tongue. His breaths I felt like almost inaudible humming in his chest. When Mulder spoke, he sounded like he was addressing himself. 

"Tell me just _one_ thing, Alex. I won't ask again. Are you my ... friend?" 

This night I should have had some time ago, and while having it, having Mulder, saying or not saying the right words didn't change anything, at least it was one that was squared away. We lived on borrowed time, since the moment we met. You have to accept gifts occasionally, because there are some things you can't give yourself. This night was a small present from the gods, one which was heavily overdue. I took it, and I was glad. Back to my chest now, Mulder's fingers were loosely hooked around my wrist, my arm resting on his hip and dangling over his groin. Like the universe, me wanting to be here was infinite and unachievable... 

The fuzzy ghost of tears I have already gulped down made my nostrils quiver and whisper, _yes_. 

I am your friend, Mulder. Because it's only a friend who would stab you in the front. 

*end  
March 27th, 2005 

1   
  

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